Just the opposite. I see that picture as a liberal attempt to make a fool look worse than his employer. The NYT suck and conservatives know it, this picture IMHO, is designed to whip up the nico-nazi's that consider the NYT the bible of daily record. Make Blair as unlikeable as possible to spare the ones higher up the food chain.
I live in the PNW, I've seen how these liberals think, (excuse me, FEEL), up close and personal. That picture meant something.
My moralistic, Bible Belt, and decidedly non-libertarian view of tobacco and smoking (to both of which I am adamantly opposed and which I hope to see eventually outlawed as moral vices and not for health reasons) are well known on this forum, as is my lonely fight against making a pro-tobacco position an "essential" of conservative ideology (I even reject the prevalent belief that pro-smoking sentiment is the "politically correct" conservative position). My enemies on this issue know my position just as I know theirs and I have no intention of being dragged into another fracas over tobacco (in which my fellow-anti-smoking conservatives, in the Bible Belt and elsewhere, have decided to leave me unsupported). I will insist again that you pro-smokers have no right to run the conservative movement or to make pro-smoking a plank of the conservative platform. That is my position and I am not going to repeat endlessly to a series of personal attacks.
And to you extremely nasty tempered pro-smokers out there who will now doubtless be posting personal attacks on me for the rest of the night, I have a preemptive response: go to freaking h*ll. Please let that suffice and allow me to get back to other issues.